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Vol 22 No 7

09 April 2012


 

  • RELIGION

    Agnostic and religious ways of seeing the world

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 April 2012
    12 Comments

    Richard Holloway's life took him from a poor Scottish village into an Anglican religious community, to priesthood, to consecration as Archbishop of Edinburgh and finally to resignation from his Church and faith. His honest and self-critical autobiography invites the reader to respond with the same honesty.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    When Catholics dropped the Bible

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 20 April 2012
    6 Comments

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    When Catholics dropped the Bible

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 20 April 2012

    Leading biblical scholar Frank Moloney reflects that after the 16th century council of Trent, 'which was a reaction to Protestantism', there was a tendency within Catholicism away from the Bible and 'into a more defensive way'. While focus was placed on strengthening the hierarchy, the Bible 'dropped out of the Catholic life'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The torture of adultery

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 19 April 2012
    7 Comments

    When her infidelity is discovered, she is rejected by her husband and flees to her lover's side. Her desire for him is excruciating in its ferocity, especially once it becomes clear that the feeling is not mutual. Having rejected one partner and being now neglected by another, she lapses into a deep depression.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Greens moral vision safe in Milne's hands

    • Tony Kevin
    • 19 April 2012
    28 Comments

    Retiring Greens leader Bob Brown is not the avuncular teddy-bear politician some paint him as. He and new leader Christine Milne share the same steel and political acumen. The next promising generation of Greens leaders will be nurtured and grow under Milne's leadership. And there are many of them.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fund facts about living with disability

    • Patricia Mowbray
    • 18 April 2012
    5 Comments

    At the end of each day, one of our three adult sons will ask, 'What's on tomorrow?' They don't ask this lightly. They have Down syndrome. Whether they participate in the community, go to work or remain at home depends on what funding we can access.

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  • CARTOON

    Bob Brown back to the bush

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 18 April 2012
    1 Comment

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  • RELIGION

    The call to celibacy

    • B. F. Moloney
    • 18 April 2012
    25 Comments

    The man becomes priest upon taking his vows of celibacy. He is no longer a man who would work and care for family, enjoy his leisure and be father to his children. In his robes and vestments he is for the flock, but not of them. What can the church offer a man or a woman who chooses celibacy?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Problems with atheism

    • Various
    • 17 April 2012
    14 Comments

    The problem with being an atheist is the lack of possibilities, a world to come into being, a kingdom to be worked for, blood and sweated for, any hope of future travels curtailed with science.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The best and worst of international aid

    • Duncan MacLaren
    • 17 April 2012
    4 Comments

    Rumour has it the Government's projected aid budget increases will be cut to ensure a surplus. Some aid doesn't work: I was horrified as a young aid worker in the '80s being told that an open sewer in an Addis Ababa slum was a World Bank project. But aid does work if it is underpinned by a few key principles.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Philip Adams in schism with the Dawkinsonians

    • Michael Mullins
    • 16 April 2012
    14 Comments

    In the shadow of the blockbuster Q&A and Global Atheist Convention was a poignant encounter between atheist broadcaster Philip Adams and Jesuit theologian Gerald O'Collins. The instant bond between the two may have a flipside in an affinity between fanatical atheists and fundamentalist religious believers.

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  • RELIGION

    Oakeshott's Malaysia Solution loophole

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 April 2012
    22 Comments

    His proposed amendment to the Migration Act is designed to remove the peg on which the High Court hung the Malaysia solution out to dry. It is a convoluted means for allowing the executive government to declare an offshore processing country without meaningful scrutiny by Parliament or the High Court.

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  • MEDIA

    Bewailing Wikipedia's white male bias

    • Ellena Savage
    • 13 April 2012
    17 Comments

    Nearly 90 per cent of Wikipedia's editors are men, the majority in their 20s. This is not Wikipedia's fault: it exists in a world that is already weighted towards the white male experience. The murder in Florida of African-American teen Trayvon Martin has catalysed criticism of the effects of white male privilege.

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  • RELIGION

    Titanic lessons in the age of swagger

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 April 2012
    9 Comments

    The Titanic has become the symbol of the end of a swaggering era marked by great self-confidence and belief in inevitable progress. It suggests that whenever swagger begins to walk the streets it is time to head for the lifeboats. We find it hard to apply this lesson to the circumstances of our own times.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gay Christians' church trauma

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 April 2012
    23 Comments

    'God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,' quips the pastor from the pulpit. The congregation finds this hilarious, but not young gay Christian Ben, who feels secretly shamed. Later, when a string of Christian counselling programs fail to 'heal' his homosexuality, Ben takes to his wrists with a razor blade.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    HSU corpse fouls Julia's nest

    • Moira Rayner
    • 12 April 2012
    16 Comments

    Most of the media bazookas are trained on her for refusing to condemn Craig Thomson, whose warm seat is toasting the shapely behind of the Gillard Government, which is one parliamentary vote ahead of oblivion. But Thomson's status as 'innocent until proven guilty' is a critical element of the rule of law.

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  • CARTOON

    Gillard's Titanic moment

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 11 April 2012

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The footballers who booted out Australian racism

    • Brian Doyle
    • 11 April 2012
    6 Comments

    At this juncture in the life of the Mighty Currawongs the usual bigotry poured forth. One columnist raged and sputtered about invasions by 'evil, small statured people'. The ensuing burst of street protests against racism in every corner of Australian life would permanently alter the course of Australian history.

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  • RELIGION

    Bruises all round in Pell-Dawkins street fight

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 11 April 2012
    89 Comments

    Atheist Richard Dawkins' debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in February was a gentlemanly affair. By contrast Dawkins' debate with Cardinal George Pell on the ABC's Q&A this week was billed as a 'title fight of belief'. As one comment on Twitter noted the next day, 'they both lost'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Raising boys who play with dolls

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 10 April 2012
    14 Comments

    For every girl who feels she is being forced to choose between a thousand shades of pink, there's a boy hemmed in by society's expectations of what a boy should be. Female empowerment will lose its value unless women take men on the journey with them.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The virtues of hoarding

    • Various
    • 10 April 2012
    4 Comments

    Let me have things about me not thrown out! Reminding things are made by hands, spent from the earth. You can't take any with you, that is sure, nor likely leave behind. But when they ask, 'Do you have a widget, a grommet, a poem by ...?' yes, I have.

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